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Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World
The records of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Britain's senior intelligence body, are now being released to the public on the same basis as other official papers. As a result, historians have available a unique archive revealing British thinking at the highest level about the world situation and threats confronting the West in the critical years after World War II.
This book, by Sir Percy Cradock - for many years himself Chairman of the JIC as well as the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Advisor - explores these hitherto top secret records and the interplay of JIC estimates and warnings with British foreign policy decisions over the first 23 years from 1945. He concentrates on the great crises of the Cold War, Berlin, Korea, Suez, Cuba, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, but also examines some lesser emergencies involving Britain alone, such as Kuwait, confrontation with Indonesia, and Rhodesia. He compares the British organization and performance with the parallel system of US intelligence and the very different machinery of the KGB. In a final chapter he reflects on the intimate relations between intelligence and policy, and how Britain adjusted to a long period of declining power.
This study aims to be a valuable addition to historical knowledge and to offer an insight into the development of Western as well as British foreign policy.
This book, by Sir Percy Cradock - for many years himself Chairman of the JIC as well as the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Advisor - explores these hitherto top secret records and the interplay of JIC estimates and warnings with British foreign policy decisions over the first 23 years from 1945. He concentrates on the great crises of the Cold War, Berlin, Korea, Suez, Cuba, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, but also examines some lesser emergencies involving Britain alone, such as Kuwait, confrontation with Indonesia, and Rhodesia. He compares the British organization and performance with the parallel system of US intelligence and the very different machinery of the KGB. In a final chapter he reflects on the intimate relations between intelligence and policy, and how Britain adjusted to a long period of declining power.
This study aims to be a valuable addition to historical knowledge and to offer an insight into the development of Western as well as British foreign policy.
362 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2002
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March 8, 2016
An interesting and illuminating review of the JIC from its origins in 1936 to the turn of the 21st century. Inevitably the later chapters are incomplete, as much of the source material was unreleased at the time of writing, but the author compensates to some degree by bringing his personal experience to bear.
The first chapter on the origins of JIC and the Second World War adds a useful perspective on how Britain led the world at the time in managing, assessing, integrating and exploiting disparate sources of intelligence. The following chapters trace the shift from allies to enemies, hot to cold war; and pick out specific crises for closer examination. The book concludes with four overviews of the committee, its effect on policy, and the parallel systems in the US and the Soviet Union.
To me the overriding impression left after reading this is 'Plus ca change ....' The original debate over a British nuclear deterrent and the committee's assessments of Russian and Chinese thought processes seem strikingly relevant to the issues we face today. Other people's concept of rationality may be different from ours and I hope we retain analysts able to think themselves into their minds - and that we listen to them.
The first chapter on the origins of JIC and the Second World War adds a useful perspective on how Britain led the world at the time in managing, assessing, integrating and exploiting disparate sources of intelligence. The following chapters trace the shift from allies to enemies, hot to cold war; and pick out specific crises for closer examination. The book concludes with four overviews of the committee, its effect on policy, and the parallel systems in the US and the Soviet Union.
To me the overriding impression left after reading this is 'Plus ca change ....' The original debate over a British nuclear deterrent and the committee's assessments of Russian and Chinese thought processes seem strikingly relevant to the issues we face today. Other people's concept of rationality may be different from ours and I hope we retain analysts able to think themselves into their minds - and that we listen to them.
Displaying 1 of 1 review